Friday • Southgate House Revival

These days, it’s an accomplishment to find something that
lasts 25 months, let alone 25 years. And yet The Iguanas are still
making vital music and crisscrossing the country to present it in its
most elementally satisfying live fashion, a quarter century after the
band’s formation in New Orleans.

Sunday • MOTR Pub

The original derivation of a casket (or casquette) girl
referred to an early 18th century female who had been repatriated from
France to the French colonial South in order to marry; “casket” referred
to the small chest that held their belongings.

Tuesday • Ballroom at the Taft Theatre

Coming on the scene in the late ’80s/early
’90s as a new guitar hot shot, Eric Johnson lit up the frets and the
music world with a Grammy Award win for his original instrumental,
“Cliffs of Dover,” in 1991. Though a multi-instrumentalist of the
highest order, he is mostly known for his fluid guitar pyrotechnics.

Friday • Fountain Square

It hardly seems possible that a decade
has gone by since the original formation of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah,
although given the band’s current status, there’s an argument to be made
that the quintet didn’t actually make it to the 10-year mark.

Saturday • Ballroom at the Taft Theatre

What if they threw a band party and only the rhythm section showed up?
That’s the oddly conceived question that
has been answered by vocalist/bassist Mike Kerr and drummer Ben
Thatcher, doing business as the Garage/Psych/Blues duo Royal Blood.

Tuesday • PNC Pavilion at Riverbend

Like Tegan & Sara (with whom they’ve
toured), Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig of Brooklyn Indie Pop band Lucius
wrap their vocals around each other, both in harmony and unison, with
the impressive precision of two vocalists who’ve sung together their
entire lives.

Thursday • Southgate House Revival

Even the Outlaw Country community
considers Billy Joe Shaver to be an outlaw. The Texas native learned to
play guitar at 11 and dropped out of school in the eighth grade to pick
cotton but returned sporadically to play sports. After a Navy hitch,
Shaver married Brenda Tindell in 1960; she divorced him six years later
when he pursued a songwriting career (they subsequently remarried,
divorced and remarried).

Thursday • Bogart’s

Though the concept of a musician becoming
a “guitar god” — a guitarist who not only has a strong fan base, but is
also almost universally revered by his or her peers -— may seem like
something that only happened decades ago, with players like Jimi Hendrix
and Stevie Ray Vaughan rightfully earning such distinction, there are
plenty of contemporary players that have attained “god-like” status in
the music community. One of today’s indisputable guitar gods is Zakk
Wylde, the hard-rocking, Jersey-born six-string slinger who’s been in
the spotlight for more than a quarter century now.

Friday • MOTR Pub

Legend has it that Josh Siegel, frontman
for dynamic Chicago Post Punk trio Bailiff, left behind his studies at
Berklee College of Music and returned to his Chicago home to form a Rock
band, immediately posting a Craigslist ad looking for other musicians
that asked, “Do you consider Radiohead to be soul music? Do you hear
Muddy Waters in between the notes on the White Album?”

Saturday • The Shoe at Horseshoe Casino Cincinnati

Although Soul singer Maxwell has enjoyed
stratospheric success as a silky and powerful R&B artist since the
mid-’90s, there’s an argument that his career has suffered from classic
mismanagement and a slight case of squandered potential. Since ’96, his
output has consisted of just four studio albums and a live EP. In
fairness, that catalog has generated 12 Grammy nominations and two wins.

Thursday • Southgate House Revival

Somehow, it seems we’ve ripped the pages
out of 21 calendars since Braid roared out of Champaign, Ill., with a
Post Punk/Emo sound that deftly combined dissonance and melodicism,
thundering heaviness and lightning heat, stuttering time signatures and
straightforward riffage.

Monday • MOTR Pub

It’s easy enough to describe Lee Bains
III & the Glory Fires in strictly musical terms. Hailing from
Birmingham, Ala., former Dexateens guitarist Bains and his rip-roaring
band of Dixie brothers scream through their sophomore album, Dereconstructed,
with the ferocity of a Punk-fueled Drive-By Truckers, informed by early
Rolling Stones, snotty ’60s Garage dervishes like The Standells and The
Shadows of Knight and ’70s swaggermeisters like The Dictators, with a
healthy dash of Southern Gospel passion.